French-Argentine artist and designer, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1955. Lives and works in Paris since 1979. Pablo Reinoso has practiced sculpture since he was a teenager. For a long time he worked mainly with wood, slate, marble, brass, and steel. He focused his search on articulation and metonymy as well as on space and time. In 1995 he decided to extend his practice to other materials. This radical change allowed his sculptures to rid themselves of the obligations of a matter. To "materialize" this change, he chose air.
Made out of cloth, his installation are divided into three metaphorical breathing typologies, namely, Breathing, Persistent, and Contracting. As an example, Breathing installations are equipped with fans that are turned on at regular intervals, creating an impression of visual and auditory breathing (Breathing monochromes series begun in 1995). At the same time, they show the interdependent relationship between breathing and life.
It is also in the 1990s when Pablo Reinoso consolidates his position as a designer. He designes furniture (Pocketable, 1998) and a great number of objects, especially since 1997, when he starts a new path between commercial strategy and art within the LVMH group. He becomes artistic director of Parfums Givenchy in 2000, and Parfums Loewe in 2002, where he designes perfume bottles and cosmetic lines. At the same time, he creates a bench for the Japanese city of Fukuroi (2000), in the outskirts of the soccer stadium that becomes a venue for the World Cup in 2002. He creates a new Leage Cup for the Ligue de Football Professionnel (2003), and works on the League's institutional image.
In time, the artist creates installations that present themselves as more absolute devices (Dr. Lacan's office, 1998). Above all, these installations question our view of ourselves through the introduction of new materials such as mirrors (The other is me, 1998 ; The observed, 2002). Liquid crystal glass offers the potential for both transparency and opacity. The alternation between these two states creates an effect of visual breathing that reveals at each moment the structure or volume of the work (The living room II, 2001). The elements made out of cloth are moving forms that contrast with the solid structure (between organic and inert) of wood or metal, as in Las Meninas : Horizontal exercise - a sculptural device - or the works of the traveling exhibit El final del eclipse [The end of the eclipse], shown in Spain and Latin America since 2001.
Used to changing paths, the artist show us that function and form are not evident. In time, an objectivation of his art work emerges. He combines his work as sculptor and designer, reinterpreting furniture and placing it in new paradigms (The last chair, 2001).
Since 2002, his installations reveal more than ever the sensivity of his work (Ashes to ashes, 2002 ; A la mesa, 2003 ; My 97 sq ft Saint Sulpice square, 2003), insidiously pushing the imaginary toward the border with chaos.
Guided by his reflection on psychoanalysis, which was already implicit in his work, Pablo Reinoso develops an analysis of his views of the discipline in his Hygienic psy series (published in Le Monde 2, March 13, 2004).
For Designer's day (Paris, June 2004), whose theme was the five senses, Reinoso conceived an installation linked to the unconscious. The project articulated around the psychoanalitic device (the armchair and the couch) to evoke a basic psychoanalytic concept - the unconscious. Each device, set up with Poltrona Frau show room, included systems that allowed the expression of the five senses through the broadcasting of sounds and images and fragrance diffusers. Two scents created for the occasion represented "perfumes-evocations" that were a product of the artist's unconscious. Pablo Reinoso also made a video with the participation of Blanca Li. In this work, psychoanalytic sessions follow one another, but the voice has been purposefully replaced by a bodily language .
Pablo Reinoso website
